Fat Chance: Losing the Weight, Gaining My Worth


Julie Hadden - 2009
    At age thirty-four she found herself at a crossroads: would she settle for staying "big" the rest of her life, or would she insist on making big changes instead? Reality-TV fans know which path Julie chose that day. When she stepped on the scale at the show's season-four finale, revealing that she had lost an astounding 45 percent of her body weight, she simultaneously stepped into the world's collective hearts. Julie's experience on "The Biggest Loser" helped birth her new physique, but the transformation went far deeper than that. From displeasure to contentment, from indulgence to self-control, from shame to self-confidence--every step along renovation's path, Julie sensed God hard at work.

Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change


Maggie Smith - 2020
    When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem “Good Bones,” started writing daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?

Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day


Ellen Jaffe Jones - 2011
    Learn how to forgo expensive processed foods and enjoy flavorful meals based on delicious, high quality basic ingredients. Author Ellen Jaffe Jones has scoured the shelves of popular supermarkets and big-box stores and calculated exactly how much it costs to eat healthfully and deliciously.One week's worth of menus shows how these recipescan be combined to get a per-serving cost of $4 a day, less thanan average meal at a fast food outlet. Readers find out how toadapt their favorite recipes, cook with beans and grains, and use bulk buying to get big savings.

The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals


Jenny Brown - 2012
    Throughout the ordeal, her constant companion was a cat named Boogie. Years later, she wouldmake the connection between her feline friend and the farm animals she ate, acknowledging that most of America’s domesticated animals live on industrialized farms, and are viewed as mere production units. Raised in a conservative Southern Baptist family in Kentucky, Brown had been taught to avoid asking questions. But she found her calling and the courage to speak out. She left a flourishing career as a film and television producer after going undercover and exposing horrific animal abuse in Texas stockyards.Bringing to life this exhilarating transformation, The Lucky Ones introduces readers to Brown’s crowning achievement, the renowned Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary she established with her husband in 2004. With a cast of unforgettable survivors, including a fugitive slaughterhouse calf named Herbie; Albie, the three-legged goat; and Quincy, an Easter duckling found abandoned in New York City, The Lucky Ones reveals shocking statistics about the prevalence of animal abuse throughout America’s agribusinesses. Blending wry humor with unflinching honesty, Brown brings a compelling new voice to the healthy-living movement—and to the vulnerable, voiceless creatures among us.

The Detox Prescription: Supercharge Your Health, Strip Away Pounds, and Eliminate the Toxins Within


Woodson Merrell - 2013
    We rely on this system when we wait for a hangover to lift or recover from a bout of food poisoning. However, cutting-edge science is revealing how toxic exposures can actually affect our genes and lead to conditions such as obesity, diabetes, arthritis, mood disorders, energy, allergies, fertility, and heart disease—all of which are on the rise.The good news is that each of us can optimize this natural cleansing system for better health, greater energy, and efficient weight loss. In The Detox Prescription, Dr. Merrell draws on new research to help readers assess their own toxic risk factors and health deficiencies. Next, he and Mary Beth Augustine, RD, offer more than 75 delicious and nutrient-rich recipes incorporating juices and whole foods, broken into 3-, 7-, and 21-day cleanses. Dr. Merrell’s holistic approach also relies on light yoga practices, basic self-care, beginning meditation, and sleep hygiene to reset body, mind, and spiritand take control of our genetic destiny.

Stuffocation


James Wallman - 2013
    On the way, he goes down the halls of the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy, up in a helicopter above Barbra Streisand's house on the California coast, and into the world of the original Mad Men.Through fascinating characters and brilliantly told stories, Wallman introduces the innovators whose lifestyles provide clues to how we will all be living tomorrow, and he makes some of the world's most counterintuitive, radical, and worldchanging ideas feel inspiring – and possible for us all.

The Meat Free Monday Cookbook


Annie Rigg - 2011
    "The Meat Free Monday Cookbook" is for everyone who shares the campaign's aims and consists of menus for each of the 52 weeks of the year. Packed with recipes such as Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes, Basil and Mushroom Tart, Pilau Rice with Cashews and Watermelon Granita, as well as vibrant spring soups, inventive summer salads, appetising autumn bakes and comforting winter stews, it includes contributions from Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney and celebrity and chef supporters of the campaign such as Skye Gyngell, Giorgio Locatelli, Theo Randall, Yotam Ottolenghi, Kevin Spacey and Vivienne Westwood.

What the Health


Kip Andersen - 2017
    Many people know there's something terribly broken about the industrial food, medical, and pharmaceutical systems, but they don't know what it is. It's no wonder because there is an intricate political and corporate apparatus in place to keep them from finding out. People think heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are inherited, not realizing that what they've actually inherited are the eating habits of their parents and grandparents. This stand-alone companion book expands upon the groundbreaking documentary, What The Health, in every way, putting foods that people buy – dairy, fish, eggs, meat – under the health microscope, while exposing the web of corporate and legislative machinations devised to confuse the public and keep Americans chronically – and profitably – ill. This is a jolting, sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying, but ultimately exhilarating adventure about reclaiming control of your health and the health of those you love.

To the Rescue: Found Dogs with a Mission


Elise Lufkin - 2009
    Each dog (and one cat) profiled has had a rough past, suffering abuse or extreme neglect at the hands of humans.Some dogs featured here have become therapy dogs for hospitals and nursing homes; reading partners for children; friends to at risk teens and the injured in veterans affairs hospitals; service dogs for the deaf and blind; arson dogs; and even search-and-rescue dogs. Some of these special dogs are disabled, blind, deaf, missing limbs, but they don't seem to know it. These spunky, happy animals have repaid the kindness of their rescuers in spades, bringing the therapy of love to people in need, sometimes even saving lives.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck


Thug Kitchen - 2014
    Beloved by Gwyneth Paltrow ("This might be my favorite thing ever") and named Saveur's Best New Food blog of 2013—with half a million Facebook fans and counting—Thug Kitchen wants to show everyone how to take charge of their plates and cook up some real f*cking food.Yeah, plenty of blogs and cookbooks preach about how to eat more kale, why ginger fights inflammation, and how to cook with microgreens and nettles. But they are dull or pretentious as hell—and most people can't afford the hype.Thug Kitchen lives in the real world. In their first cookbook, they're throwing down more than 100 recipes for their best-loved meals, snacks, and sides for beginning cooks to home chefs. (Roasted Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos? Pumpkin Chili? Grilled Peach Salsa? Believe that sh*t.) Plus they're going to arm you with all the info and techniques you need to shop on a budget and go and kick a bunch of ass on your own.This book is an invitation to everyone who wants to do better to elevate their kitchen game. No more ketchup and pizza counting as vegetables. No more drive-thru lines. No more avoiding the produce corner of the supermarket. Sh*t is about to get real.

Healthy Eating, Healthy World: Unleashing the Power of Plant-Based Nutrition


J. Morris Hicks - 2011
    As Dr. T. Colin Campbell says, "It turns out that if we eat the way that promotes the best health for ourselves, we also promote the best health for the planet."Like a blinding flash of the obvious, the single most viable solution to all of these issues is an aggressive move in the direction of consuming much more whole, plant-based foods—not necessarily becoming vegetarian or vegan. This book clearly explains how and why we began eating the wrong food for our species and provides helpful guidelines for getting us back on the road to vibrant health and effortless weight-loss.Fortunately, despite the incredible complexity of our current dilemma, the solution is refreshingly simple. It simply requires educating yourself, making better choices in what you eat, and then share all that you have learned with everyone you care about. There has never been anything more important in the history of the world.

Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination


J.K. Rowling - 2015
    Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others?Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.

We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere


Gillian Anderson - 2017
    It’s about transitioning from a me-first culture and imagining what a we-based world might look like. In We, Anderson and Nadel ask why so many women are locked in cycles of depression, addiction, self-criticism, and even self-harm. How much more effective and powerful would we all be if we replaced our current patterns of competition, criticism, and comparison with collaboration, cooperation, and compassion? Putting these values at the center of our lives allows each of us to be happier and more empowered, and to replace harmful habits with a more positive, peaceful, and rewarding way of being. We is a rallying cry for “every woman, everywhere on the planet. Open to any page. And there you will find a truth that can set you free” (Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom).

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life


Gretchen Rubin - 2012
    Homesick—why? She was standing right in her own kitchen. She felt homesick, she realized, with love for home itself. “Of all the elements of a happy life,” she thought, “my home is the most important.” In a flash, she decided to undertake a new happiness project, and this time, to focus on home.And what did she want from her home? A place that calmed her, and energized her. A place that, by making her feel safe, would free her to take risks. Also, while Rubin wanted to be happier at home, she wanted to appreciate how much happiness was there already. So, starting in September (the new January), Rubin dedicated a school year—September through May—to making her home a place of greater simplicity, comfort, and love.  In The Happiness Project, she worked out general theories of happiness. Here she goes deeper on factors that matter for home, such as possessions, marriage, time, and parenthood. How can she control the cubicle in her pocket? How might she spotlight her family’s treasured possessions? And it really was time to replace that dud toaster. Each month, Rubin tackles a different theme as she experiments with concrete, manageable resolutions—and this time, she coaxes her family to try some resolutions, as well.  With her signature blend of memoir, science, philosophy, and experimentation, Rubin’s passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire readers to find more happiness in their own lives.

How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet


Tanya Barnard - 1999
    With fun illustrations and a cool, punky sensibility, How It All Vegan! will tempt you to join the Vegan Empire. "Written with sass, style, and a sense of humor. More than just a cookbook. . . ."—BUST